The Death of Ford Madox Brown - THE JOURNAL OF ART 1893

Death has been strangely busy in the late autumn with some of the noblest names in English Art. In Ford Madox Brown, who died on October 6th, 1893, passed away not only a brilliantly original and distinctive artist of high accomplishment, but one of the names which connects us with a great revolutionary epoch in English Art. Mr Brown was trained from his extreme youth in the severe practice of Art, to which he was heart and soul devoted.

Though later in life so intimately associated with the city of Manchester that many people supposed him to be a native thereof, he was born at Calais in 1821, and was of Scottish parentage. In his boyhood he was placed under the tutelage of Baron Wappers, at Antwerp, and there mastered, in a fashion attempted by few, if any, living artists, the mysteries of all processes of Art, fresco, oil, water-colour, pastel, encaustic, engraving, lithography, and much else. Subsequently, he lived and studied in Paris, and still later in Rome, his earliest work showing the influence successively of Delacroix, who at that time dominated French Art, and the great Italian masters. With the Pre-Raphaelite movement he was never officially associated, though he was a Pre-Raphaelite before the Pre-Raphaelites, and his celebrated picture, "Wicliff reading his Translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt," exhibited in 1848 in London, strongly influenced and determined the seven young painters who that year formed themselves into the famous brotherhood. Later D G Rossetti became the pupil of Madox Brown.

His life was a series of great achievements and bitter disappointments, and his domestic happiness was overshadowed by the death of his son, Oliver, a youth of extraordinary promise, who contributed brilliantly to the famous "Germ."

The Manchester Exhibition of 1887 was in some measure due to Mr Brown's efforts; and a splendid collection of his works was brought together in the Fine art section which covered the fifty years of Victorian Art. In 1891 a number of admiring artists and amateurs subscribed £900 that Ford Madox Brown might be adequately represented in the National Gallery. The artist accepted the commission to paint a picture for this purpose, but dying left it incomplete.

My Comments

I found this short tribute to Ford Madox Brown whist researching another subject, but thought that it was so interesting, and the highly original and unique artist so under-valued, that I decided to include it on VAB.

PHR 4/12/2002

Biography